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Louise Penny

Author of Still Life

Includes the names: Louis Penny, Louise Penny, by Louise Penny

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45,272 (54,521)3,227337 (4.04)132
Louise Penny was born in Toronto, Canada in 1958. She earned a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Radio and Television) from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in 1979. Before she turned to writing mystery novels in 2004, she was a journalist and radio host for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in various cities across Canada for 25 years. She writes the Chief Inspector Gamache Novel series. She has won numerous awards including the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards for Still Life and the 2007 Agatha Award for Best Novel for A Fatal Grace. Louise's title, The Long Way Home, made the Hot Mystery Title's List for Summer 2014. Her titles The Nature of the Beast made The New York Times best seller list in 2015 and A Great Reckoning made The New York Times best seller list in 2016. (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from Still Life… (more)
Still Life 6,200 copies, 411 reviews
A Fatal Grace 3,725 copies, 224 reviews
The Cruellest Month 3,060 copies, 185 reviews
The Brutal Telling 2,935 copies, 268 reviews
A Rule Against Murder 2,819 copies, 153 reviews
Bury Your Dead 2,759 copies, 214 reviews
The Beautiful Mystery 2,616 copies, 184 reviews
A Trick of the Light 2,457 copies, 147 reviews
How the Light Gets In 2,413 copies, 160 reviews
The Long Way Home 1,989 copies, 121 reviews
A Great Reckoning 1,975 copies, 117 reviews
Glass Houses 1,934 copies, 115 reviews
The Nature of the Beast 1,919 copies, 118 reviews
Kingdom of the Blind 1,700 copies, 95 reviews
A Better Man 1,478 copies, 87 reviews
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Introduction, some editions) 9,118 copies, 294 reviews
Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery (Original novel) 7 copies
State of Terror / Never (Contributor) 1 copy

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Short biography
I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in Toronto in 1958 and became a journalist and radio host with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, specializing in hard news and current affairs. My first job was in Toronto and then moved to Thunder Bay at the far tip of Lake Superior, in Ontario. It was a great place to learn the art and craft of radio and interviewing, and listening. That was the key. A good interviewer rarely speaks, she listens. Closely and carefully. I think the same is true of writers.

From Thunder Bay I moved to Winnipeg to produce documentaries and host the CBC afternoon show. It was a hugely creative time with amazingly creative people. But I decided I needed to host a morning show, and so accepted a job in Quebec City. The advantage of a morning show is that it has the largest audience, the disadvantage is having to rise at 4am.

But Quebec City offered other advantages that far outweighed the ungodly hour. It's staggeringly beautiful and almost totally French and I wanted to learn. Within weeks I'd called Quebecers 'good pumpkins', ordered flaming mice in a restaurant, for dessert naturally, and asked a taxi driver to 'take me to the war, please.' He turned around and asked 'Which war exactly, Madame?' Fortunately elegant and venerable Quebec City has a very tolerant and gentle nature and simply smiled at me.

From there the job took me to Montreal, where I ended my career on CBC Radio's noon programme.

In my mid-thirties the most remarkable thing happened. I fell in love with Michael, the head of hematology at the Montreal Children's Hospital. He'd go on to hold the first named chair in pediatric hematology in Canada, something I take full credit for, out of his hearing.

It's an amazing and blessed thing to find love later in life. It was my first marriage and his second. He'd lost his first wife to cancer a few years earlier and that had just about killed him. Sad and grieving we met and began a gentle and tentative courtship, both of us slightly fearful, but overcome with the rightness of it. And overcome with gratitude that this should happen to us and deeply grateful to the family and friends who supported us.

Eleven years later we live in an old United Empire Loyalist brick home in the country, surrounded by maple woods and mountains and smelly dogs.

There are times when I'm in tears writing. Not because I'm so moved by my own writing, but out of gratitude that I get to do this. In my life as a journalist I covered deaths and accidents and horrible events, as well as the quieter disasters of despair and poverty. Now, every morning I go to my office, put the coffee on, fire up the computer and visit my imaginary friends, Gamache and Beauvoir and Clara and Peter. What a privilege it is to write. I hope you enjoy reading the books as much as I enjoy writing them.
Disambiguation notice

LibraryThing Early Reviewers Alum

Louise Penny's book The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Louise Penny's book Bury Your Dead was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Louise Penny's book The Brutal Telling was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

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